OUR Journey THRU IVF…

Isn’t this a CRAZY Statistic??? And at the time I know the feeling you think you are the ONLY Person going through this…

Ok ok and let the journey begin… And holy cow a journey it was and will always make us stronger individuals for going through it and going through it together!

Also I completely forget to mention. We did 4 rounds of IUIs before we even went to IVF. And based on the clinical data your percentages of getting pregnant go waaaaaaay down after the second IUI. So I wished we would have pushed to IVF instead of 2 more IUIs.

First off… once you meet with the IVF specialist and decide this is the route for you… you start with TONS of testing…. Just be ready to make yourself a Pin Cushion and smile while you do it because you know what WHO CARES you are on your road to having your family!! I didn’t care if I had to get stuck 1000 times I was ready for it! Literally it might be 1000 🙂

So when you pick your date or your IVF plan and make sure your insurance covers or decide how much you have to pay they want you to make sure YOU ARE READy sooooo you 1st have to go through orientation… And people before you go into this session you talk about nerves/anxiety it is honestly SCARY! Then when you walk in and see so many people heading toward the same process you are or the struggles you have been through it honestly is refreshing and you already feel support in that room!

You walk in and you receive a HUGE binder going thru the whole process you are about to embark on! And to me it was overwhelming but I am sort of an OCD scheduler/planner so i felt great that we FINALLY had a PLAN!!

So the next steps… SCHEDULE YOUR START DATE!..

#1 First Step of the IVF Process is to PRODUCE Eggs…. so therefore as the woman you need to….. lets just say give yourself LOTS and LOTS of injections to get your eggs a pumping and producing. They will give you a START DATE to start your injections and will let you know when you need to come in for your first round of blood work (like I said this will be the first of many you little pin cushion you!) I was stuck many many times and had to make a lot of trips to STL to Washington University where we did our rounds of IVF. I would get up super early or stay at my sis in laws to go into the office and do blood work that lasted maybe 2 seconds and head back to my territory and start my day. When it gets close to your retrieval you might be doing blood work every other day so hang in there it is just a matter of time for your miracles to come! Lets continue to look at the big picture peeps!

#2 Egg Retrieval… When you are ready to go and you have produced the eggs they want you to have (which they will determine this by your blood work) you will be ready for the egg retrieval. The medicine I took worked SUPER WELL because I produced 28 eggs! Which in the IVF world that is a lot!! (So therefore I didn’t realize I was overstimulated until a few weeks later… and thats another story in itself).

Below is the normal for retrieval eggs...

The actual Egg Retrieval process honestly is pretty easy. You will need someone to take you and bring you home because you will be lightly sedated. All I remember them saying is think of something nice and all I remember is seeing my husband Lance by my side and saying I want to be at the beach having a cocktail. And it seemed like 5 min later I was in recover and they were waking me up! Some people have some cramping after this process but I honestly don’t remember much cramping at all really. I was just super excited that we were 1 step closer to having our babies!

#3 The Sperm – The Sperm Sample is collected! – There is really no explanation for this… use your imagination people!
We need sperm to get with the eggs to make an EMBRYO!!!

#4 Eggs and Sperm come together to FERTILIZE! – This is a process you kind of just wait and see what happens. So your eggs have been retrieved and the sperm is there and they pretty much put them in a petri dish to see what they are gonna do! You wait a few days and they will let you know how many Fertilized! We were SUPER lucky and after 2 days we had 21 out of our 28 eggs FERTILIZE (but the goal is to get them to the 5 day mark which we call there 5-day transfer embryos). So from 28 to 21 to 12 to 6. 6 was our FINAL count of DAY 5 Embryos which was GREAT! We were super excited for this! So we would be able to transfer and also have some FROZEN little embryos for later!

#5 ITS TRANSFER TIME…..Time to put these little ones back in my uterus! – So then on day 6 they call you to come in (you drop everything because thats just what you do) and you go in an they implant them into your uterus! I know sounds super odd but HONESTLY how COOL is it that you get to see your little embryos be put in your uterus through an ultrasound machine??? Not everyone gets to see that on a daily basis?? (So you lucky people that look at your hubby and get pregnant see what you are missing out on?? haha)

Here was one of our little embryos that we got to see before it was transferred…

We had two embryos that looked similar! I remember the doctor asking are you SURE you want to transfer two and Lance and I looked at each other and said ABSOLUTELY! Gosh if we could have 2 how great would that be then we could be done? Or if one didn’t take then we would have a better chance at being pregnant 🙂 So 2 were implanted and then the hardest part of the journey….

WE WAIT…… 2 WEEKS! When you are going through IVF or waiting to test its like ETERNITY!!!